


the all in one and one in all

by OnceAndFloral



Series: Odin's little gift [4]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Kind of a character study, Unadvised Scientific Process, You can also view it as lyf/marius but nothing explicitly romantic happens so I didn't tag it, eldritch!Lyfrassir, no more than what's in the bifrost incident tho lmao, there's fluff but only at the beginning, this is written from marius' perspective for a very specific reason, we getting into shit now boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-20 09:03:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22946497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnceAndFloral/pseuds/OnceAndFloral
Summary: An exploration into Inspector Lyfrassir Edda's new abilities, and how Marius von Raum decides to navigate it.
Relationships: Lyfrassir Edda & Marius von Raum
Series: Odin's little gift [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646122
Comments: 16
Kudos: 214





	the all in one and one in all

It first became clear that Lyfrassir was getting used to their powers when they literally phased through the ceiling and dropped down in front of Marius.

“Do you know where Jonny is?” Marius jumped back as they suddenly appeared, causing a loud thud when they landed.

“Holy _shit_ , Lyfrassir, you can’t just scare me like that! Heart attacks are one of my least favorite ways to die.” He held a hand to his chest to catch his breath. “How the hell did you do that?”

They shrugged. “I tripped a few days ago and fell through a wall. It took some tries but I think I have it down now.”

“What I’m hearing is that you walked into a bunch of walls.”

Lyfrassir scowled and punched Marius’ non-mechanism arm, though without any real force. “I’m sorry, can you walk through solid objects?”

“No, but I also don’t smash my face into the wall.” Marius gasped, clapping his hands together. “Ohh, the Aurora probably has that on footage!”

“Not if I delete it before you get to it!”

He grinned. “Oh, but my dear, dear Lyfrassir, our resident bosun has to inform our first mate of any new damage! That’s why you were looking for Jonny, right?”

Lyfrassir’s eyes narrowed. The showdown had officially started. “He wouldn’t care if I was a bit late. He gets pissy when I interrupt what he’s doing anyways.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d take my side on this one. Jonny’s not one to turn down the opportunity to see a crew member in pain.”

They went quiet as they visibly ran the mental math. Lyfrassir gently placed their hands on Marius’ shoulders. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? The intense embarrassment you’re going to feel?”

Without saying another word, Lyfrassir grabbed his collar as they started to phase through the floor, dragging Marius down with them. Unfortunately, Maris did not have the same intangibility powers and instead of going to the lower level of the ship had his face bashed into the floor.

“Mother _fucker,”_ Marius groaned, crawling to his hands and knees. 

“Oh, what a shame, now if you want to show Jonny the footage of me you’ll have to scrub through that first,” Lyfrassir was already back, kneeling down next to Marius. 

“How’d you get back up here so fast?”

“Went through the wall, climbed through the crawlspace, back through the other wall.”

“Useful.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell our captain about the damage sustained to one of the oxygen pumping systems.”

Marius exerted the energy to roll his eyes. “At least call him first mate so he doesn’t get full of himself.”

“I think by now you should know I express myself by putting myself into direct opposition to you.”

* * *

Marius used to think that Lyf was the most stable person onboard the Aurora. This turned out to be false.

As it turned out, there was a reason that people who joined the Mechanisms were off. Traumatic experiences clearly took their toll on all of them. Seeing Lyf go through this made them wonder what the other Mechs were like before they boarded the Aurora…

In any case, he discovered them in the depths of the ship one day, in a seldom used room hours past when Lyfrassir had said they were going to go to bed. They were sitting on one of the chairs scattered about the room, biting the nail of their thumb and staring into the seam where the wall met the floor.

“Good eve-”

“Shh.” They cut off Marius’ usual greeting, squinting just slightly as though there was something more to what they were looking at. They were watching so intently that Marius himself took a second to try and see what they did.

“What are we listening for?” Marius whispered loudly.

“The whispering.” Lyf’s eyes slid closed. 

He paused. “Where?”

“Right _here.”_ They touched their fingertips to Marius’ forehead and suddenly there was a roaring inside his mind.

If this was what Lyf called whispers, he was loathe to know what yelling was like. The tones of the voices were hushed, like they were telling a secret, but there were so many Marius could hardly hear Lyf speak out loud.

“See? I told you.”

Marius tried to parse what exactly the “whispers” were saying but they were so layered they could barely make out syllables, let alone whole words. Then, all at once, they silenced as Lyf pulled their hand back. 

“I’m not crazy,” Lyf asserted. “You heard them, and that means I’m not crazy. I know they’re trying to tell me something, but I haven’t figured it out.”

“Do you hear that all the time?” Marius asked. 

“No, not all the time. You’re not _listening_ to me, Marius. I have to understand them.”

That was worrying. Marius was definitely not the one the ship who understood the outer gods the most, but they didn’t want Lyf to get in trouble. Jonny had already been jumpy enough when they had first come on board the Aurora to try and throw them out of the airlock. 

“Maybe… you shouldn’t, hm? That all seems really stressful. Do you know how to get rid of them?” 

“They just go on their own,” Lyf said distantly. 

“Great! I’ll just hang around with you until it’s all good.”

Later when Lyf played cards with the rest of the Mechs and was acting like the whispers had never happened, Marius decided that he didn’t need to tell anyone about it.

* * *

“This seems like a terrible idea.”

“Sod off, Marius,” Raphaella said. “It’s just an experiment.”

“I said I was fine with it,” Lyfrassir shrugged from where they sat on the operating table. “Just… shoot me if something goes wrong?”

“You’re getting much more comfortable with your immortality,” Raphaella noted. “Let’s start off with something easy for you, okay?”

“Sure.” 

Marius rested his hand against the gun on his hip as Lyfrassir closed their eyes. Nothing happened at first, then there was a ripple around the fabric of reality close to them. It started bending, warping the image around them like a video picture in the midst of being tampered with. Lyfrassir themself looked unaffected, like an anchor in the middle of a roaring ocean. 

Raphaella picked up a scalpel from the table next to her and tossed it into the convolution. It hovered for a moment, then folded in on itself a million times until it completely disappeared.

“Okay,” Raphaella said. “Do you know what you just did?”

“No? Did something else happen?”

“I just threw something into the field of effect. I was wondering if you did it consciously.” She tapped her chin with her pen. “I wonder what would happen if we put a living thing into it.”

Lyfrassir’s eyes snapped open, the ripples around them coming to a still. “What?”

Marius grimaced as well. “I’m not too sure about that idea either, Raph. I’m not too keen on stepping into that myself. It doesn’t look all that pleasant.”

“I can just get an octokitten! They’re pests anyways.” She flew up to the pipes and metal beams that formed the rafters and rustled around an unseen area, returning with one of the things in her arms. “Would you like to close your eyes again?”

“Ugh, I guess so.” Lyfrassir buried their face in their hands. This time when the reality warping effect came, Marius’ stomach lurched at it, as though it were simultaneously attracting and repelling everything in the vicinity.

Raphaella set the octokitten down and nudged it with her foot, guiding it towards Lyfrassir. After a little more bothering, it finally crawled to the area Raphaella wanted it. 

What occurred was unsettling to describe. The octokitten didn’t fold in on itself like the scalpel did. Rather, its features lengthened and grew, coming to threatening points. The little bastard’s tentacles were the worst of it, stretching to much longer than should be proportional to its body. And they were reaching right for Raphaella and Marius.

Marius had his gun whipped out and fired in an instant, but the bullet disappeared like the pen had. Lyfrassir uncovered their face at the sound of the gunshot, dispelling the effect once more. This didn’t seem to do much to affect the octokitten, however. Its many eyes now blank with madness, it made an awful hissing sound as it wrapped a tentacle around Raphaella’s wrist and forced her to drop the pen.

“Shit,” Marius growled, firing another round off. This one landed, tearing right through the limb holding Raphaella.

“This is new!” Raphaella smiled.

“You could look a little less excited about it!”

“Should I do something?” Lyfrassir called.

“No, no, Marius and I have this handled." Raphaella pulled out her own gun and burst one of the octokitten's eyes with a bullet. It recoiled immediately, retreating to hide behind Lyfrassir. Despite being many times bigger now, it somehow managed to fit neatly behind them.

"I just want to put it on the record that I'm not commanding it to do any of this," they sighed.

"Noted." Raphaella looked to Marius. "Do you want to do the honors or do I?"

He shrugged, lining his gun up to point right where the octokitten's heart should theoretically be, unfortunately coinciding with Lyfrassir's as well. "Sorry, Inspector."

"Just get it over with."

With one final, clean shot, the octokitten collapsed to the floor, a twitching bundle of corrupted flesh and tentacles. Lyfrassir rolled their shoulder back.

"I don't know why it hurts sometimes," they grimaced. "I would be nice to figure that out so I'm not sore for the rest of the day."

"Well, in any case, the experiment was a success!" Raphaella grinned, waving her notepad.

"How was _that_ a success?" Marius sniped.

"Putting a living thing into the field was different than non-living, correct? That's one step closer to narrowing down exactly what it does!" She placed a hand on his shoulder. "You are excellent hired muscle, by the way."

"Okay, but don't come crying to me if this shit wrecks your lab."

Lyfrassir hopped down from the table, swaying slightly on their feet. "Ah, this is… worse than usual. I think I'm going to go pass out."

"Wait, like right now?"

In a concise answer, they pitched forward right into Marius' arms. He chuckled, only slightly nervously which was an accomplishment. “Uh, are you okay?”

“I’m conscious.” In Marius’ medical opinion, that was pretty good.

“I’m going to take you to the med bay.”

“God dammit.”

He smiled. Any Lyfrassir that could protest against going into Marius’ care was in decent enough shape.

* * *

Lyf never liked to exit the ship to visit planets like the rest of the Mechs. There was always some excuse about not wanting to get into a bar fight because of Jonny or that they weren’t in the mood to run from and or kill the police because Ashes burned down a building. But that didn’t stop Marius from literally dragging them out of the Aurora when they landed in a seedy town with the smell of dried blood and enough smoke wafting through the air to cause Jonny to grin and pick up his guns.

“You’re embarrassing me, you know,” Marius grunted as he pulled Lyf along by their ankle while they laid on the ground.

“You didn’t even have to do this.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the dignified one here. You’re acting like a child.”

“My pride was eaten by the cosmic entity that planted itself in my head so now I feel no shame.”

“Can you _please_ get up? I’m just trying to have some fun with you.”

Lyf huffed, kicking away Marius’ hand and climbing to their feet. They did a little _ta-da_ motion with their hands. “Are you happy?”

“I don’t know about _happy_ but things are looking up now, yes.”

They go to a bar together at Lyf’s request. It’s pleasant enough. Lyf threw back enough drinks to impress even Marius, and that’s when they discovered that their alcohol tolerance had been knocked through the roof. An interesting tidbit, but that’s not what Marius remembered the most about that night.

It happened when they were leaving the bar. Marius insisted on killing everyone instead of paying their bill, and Lyf just rolled their eyes and said they were going to go wait outside instead of being caught in the bloodshed.

The job had been easy. It was always easy. Marius had to wonder that if maybe he had just been a little quicker about it, the next thing wouldn’t have happened. They would be back on the Aurora, and everything would have been okay.

He stepped outside, rubbing his hands together to flake off the dried blood. “Alright, Inspector, let’s…”

Marius trailed off as he realized Lyf was nowhere to be seen. He heard voices coming from the alley right next door. They must have stepped aside for a conversation.

When he entered the alleyway, it was pretty clear that was not what had happened. There was some tall, bulky guy towering over Lyf and yelling at them but they were just… staring at him with a cigarette burning itself out in between their fingers. Marius was just about to run and intervene when he noticed a slight ripple to the air around Lyf, like a smaller version of what had happened in Raphaella’s lab. He thought back to the octokitten. He _really_ didn’t want to end up like that.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” The guy snarled. He snapped his fingers right in front of Lyf’s face. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Hey!” Marius yelled. “I’d step away from them if I were you!”

He snapped his head to the side and glared at Marius. “Fuck off. This doesn’t concern you.”

Marius was running the mental math as fast as he could. He couldn’t shoot this bastard, the bullet would just disappear into Lyf’s pocket dimension or whatever-the-fuck. Plus, unless he stepped away from the inspector, he was probably going to turn into some eldritch monster.

Lyf blinked rapidly all of the sudden, like they’d just returned from an out of body experience. “Oh.”

“Yea, _oh_.”

A lot of things happened in very quick succession. First the spatial disturbance disappeared from around Lyf, and the very instant Marius noticed he sprinted forward to tackle this man. He’d completely forgotten his gun in that moment, he was only concerned with getting Lyf away before shit went down.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get there before the guy grabbed Lyf’s wrist. Marius’ stomach lurched the same way it had in the experiment, sending him to a screeching halt a few feet away from the two. From where the man touched them, bright lines of light spread along his veins, racing up his arm and into his chest and face. When they reached his eyes, the reddened blood vessels turned black and his entire body stiffened.

“Y...you…”

Lyf gently extracted themself from his grip. “It's very rude to grab someone without their permission.” They took a step towards him, and he stumbled back in fear, landing right on his ass.

“What the hell are you?”

Lyf’s face twitched into a grimace, just for a second, then it settled back to an impassive stare. “Marius, give me your gun. No point in letting this man suffer longer than he needs to.”

“Why of course, Inspector.” Marius took the pistol from his belt and handed it over. Lyf held it with both hands, the very picture of a trained New Midgardian officer.

“You're a monster,” The man spat.

Lyf sighed. “I know.”

The resulting _bang!_ echoed through the alleyway. Lyf handed the pistol back to Marius, rubbing a thumb into one of their palms.

“What did he do to you?” Marius shook his head, quickly amending his statement. “What did you do to _him?”_

“It's complicated. It involves a bunch of gross emotions.”

“‘Gross emotions?’ Who are you, Jonny?” There's a long period of silence where Lyf doesn't answer. “Did you know you could do that?”

“No. He just grabbed me, and instinct took over.” Lyf pulled their jacket tighter around themself. “Let’s just get back to the Aurora. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

* * *

The next event happened not even a week after the altercation in the city. It had been really good up until that point, actually. Marius had even won a couple of card games, and the Aurora herself seemed happier now that someone was actually giving her routine maintenance. 

But one night when he was just wandering around the ship, someone grabbed Marius by the lapels and shoved him into a wall. Lyf was leaning very, very close to his face, a wild look in their eyes. “I need you to choke me to death.”

His brain short circuited. _“What?!”_

“Fucking _kill_ me, Von Raum!” They shouted. “You kill people all the time so kill _me!”_

“Okay, let me just get my gun-” 

Lyf made an odd hissing noise, and it took Marius a second to recognize it as laughter. “No, no, no, no, you can't shoot me, that won't _work_.” One hand let go of his jacket, shaking violently as it instead rested upon his cheek. “Marius, please, please, please…” 

In a long story made short, Lyfrassir slid to the ground when Marius finally let go of their throat, limp as a rag doll and eyes empty. Even so, their face was peaceful. Relieved, even. 

Killing them had made Marius feel scared. He hadn't been scared of anything for a long time, so the slight tremble to his hands felt that much more powerful. He waited there until Lyfrassir blinked alive and rose to their feet. 

“Why?” Is all that Marius could say. 

“I had to get the whispers to shut up for just a second,” they responded simply. 

Then they just walked away. Marius walked back to his own room, mildly despondent. He couldn’t tell anyone else about that. He didn’t know what they’d do. He didn’t know what _he_ was going to do. 

That night his dreams were filled with uncanny laughter and colors beyond what should be possible. 

**Author's Note:**

> There's that! If anyone is curious, the WIP title was "brink". I mentioned in the tags that there's a reason this is from Marius' perspective rather than Lyf's (or any other mechanism, for that matter), but I'm stubborn and want to have an air of mystique so. Hah. I'm also gonna be taking requests/ suggestions so if you have any feel free to ask in the comments or send me a message over @onceandfloral-writing on tumblr!


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